NEW YORK -- The old lady is gleaming now, all gussied up and spit-shined for one more night out on the town.

Monument Park is a must-see at Yankee Stadium. (Getty Images)

But for three or so hours on what is predicted to be a gorgeous night in New York City, folks are going to try, beginning with the first pitch Cleveland's Cliff Lee throws in Tuesday's 79th All-Star Game.

What we've got here is a collection of some of the world's greatest players. Josh Hamilton is in from Texas with a gold-plated first half. The Chicago Cubs have sent eight players, including Japanese sensation Kosuke Fukudome and ace Carlos Zambrano. The Red Sox are checking in, of course, with three starters -- outfielder Manny Ramirez, first baseman Kevin Youkilis and second baseman Dustin Pedroia.

And yet, here comes the old lady, all dolled up in lipstick and heels, intent on stealing the show.

What else would you expect from Yankee Stadium?

"This stadium deserves the attention," Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter says. "This stadium deserves this sort of going-away party."

Now, there are certain mysteries to life. Why stadiums are referred to in the feminine gender. How, as mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani was able to consistently clear his calendar to attend so many Yankees games.

And how it came to be that so many umpires over the years developed such severe cases of the yips here that they consistently gave the Yankees the benefit of the doubt on so many close calls.

Forget, for a moment, the ghosts. No, that's not the rumble of the subway train beyond the outfield walls, it's the echoes of Babe Ruth's belches. No, that's not a sudden gust of wind that carries Jeter's ball over the fence, it's the breath of God himself, who has just received a novena from Yogi Berra or Lou Gehrig, gently blowing the ball over the wall. Yes, this is the hallowed ground on which Joe DiMaggio started his 56-game hitting streak.

Look, we all know about that stuff. And if we forget, the Yankees will cram it down our throats on the YES Network, baseball's most successful propaganda machine.

So many flowery odes to this joint have been dispatched over the past several days, you wouldn't believe it. My computer froze, and the tech guy who fixed it said he found several rose petals stuck in the hard drive. Figures.

Well, guess what? Not everything that happens here is warm, fuzzy and happy, you know. Especially if you're playing for the other team. As Hall of Famer George Brett was saying during the Celebrity Softball Game here the other day, "I have a lot of memories here. A lot of sad memories."

The fans in the seats to whom he was speaking didn't care. They barely batted an eye before resuming their "Paul O'Neill!" chants.

"I think it should steal the attention," Jeter says of Yankee Stadium. "Rightfully so. This stadium is as special as it gets. A lot of things here go above and beyond baseball games.

Well, yes. Such as ...

Mysterious strike zones

The latest incarnation of the Yankees dynasty was for the ages. It was the stuff of legend. Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn says the storied 1998 Yankees were the best team he's ever seen.

Of course, that fact was emphasized several times a game when some team from Podunk, Wisc., or Backwater, Minn., would show up for a regularly scheduled contest in Yankee Stadium.

"There was a period of time there when they were loaded in the Paul O'Neill days and the strike zone was a little funny," Hall of Famer Paul Molitor says. "It was a little inconsistent. They'd get five strikes sometimes. I always felt that if you were a small-market team or a mid-market team, you didn't have much of a chance."

Not with the umpires genuflecting before Joe Torre's clubs more than anybody ever worshipped out in Monument Park. They still complain about that to this day in San Diego, where, in the 1998 World Series, the Padres received some pretty heavy ...

Life lessons

The first of which would be, don't trust anything. Even if you think you see it with your own eyes. The Padres still wake up in a cold sweat thinking about Mark Langston's 2-2 pitch to Tino Martinez in Game 1 of the '98 World Series.

Et tu, Tino? Maybe Martinez should hand a tip to the umps. (Getty Images)

Yeah, and the Padres led the vaunted Yankees 5-2 going into the bottom of the seventh. Then Chuck Knoblauch cracked a game-tying, three-run homer. Then, Tino stepped in with two out and the bases loaded, Langston went 2-2 and then froze Martinez with a pitch that appeared right down the middle of the plate. Right down Broadway, if you will.

Plate umpire Richie Garcia ruled it low, and ball three. Granted a reprieve, next pitch, Martinez blasted a grand slam. The Padres' Game 1 lead was emphatically wiped out, and the sweep was on.

"Not taking anything away from them, because they were outstanding, but that 2-2 pitch to Tino, seven guys were running off the field with that pitch," says Gwynn, who was introduced to Yankee Stadium that night. "Next pitch, grand slam.

"That's my only negative memory of Yankee Stadium. It was well worth the wait, except for that 2-2 pitch, God dangit."

Moments like those are why it is important to remember, you should never hesitate when it comes to ...

Questioning authority

It wasn't just the blown strike call in the '98 World Series that left Garcia with his very own piece of real estate in Yankee Stadium lore.

Jeffrey Maier: Snot-nosed brat or Yankee hero? You decide. (Getty Images)

Fan interference? Sure looked highly suspicious according to television replays. But not the way Garcia saw it.

"That ball was over, anyway," Jeter says, grinning wickedly.

In what surely will be one of the crowning personal moments of his career, Jeter will be the starting shortstop, No. 2 hitter and gracious host in Tuesday's game.

But deep down, many of us know he's simply lucky to be alive these days thanks to one moment that could have haunted Yankee Stadium forever ...

Overzealous bald eagles

It was in the moments before Game 1 of the 2003 ALCS against Boston when Jeter had his brush with the evil eagle's talons. During another of the Yankee doodle dandy patriotic pregame ceremonies, a bald eagle named "Challenger" was supposed to gracefully soar from center field to a dramatic home plate landing just after the national anthem.

The eagle landed ... almost on Derek Jeter's unprotected head. (Getty Images)

Except, on this day ...

"The eagle almost killed us," Jeter says. "We haven't seen Challenger since."

An ill-timed military flyover -- the jets were several seconds later, or early, I forget which -- spooked the poor eagle. Instead of landing as scheduled at home plate, the bird buzzed Jeter and then-Yankees second baseman Alfonso Soriano. Each ducked, else the eagle may have taken a piece of his scalp.

"The flyover scared him -- or her, whatever it is," Jeter recalls. "Something told me to turn around and look and, when I looked, that bird almost got me and Soriano."

"We see the eagle and we go down quickly, because we don't know where the eagle is going to land," says Soriano, who was voted a starter in Tuesday's game but had to back out because of a broken hand.

Jeter is absolutely right. Challenger hasn't been seen since in Yankee Stadium. You could just picture owner George Steinbrenner rushing down to the bird's cage after Jeter's escape and screaming, "Challenger, you're fired! Pack up your feathers and beat it!"

"I've seen it in Chicago two or three times," Soriano says, and doggone if the Cubs don't employ an eagle named "Challenger" periodically on Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. "I don't know if it's the same one, but I see it."

Patriotism

Funniest moment in recent Yankee Stadium history? Detroit's in town in August, 2006, and plate umpire James Hoye ejects Tigers manager Jim Leyland for chirping about balls and strikes from the dugout. So Leyland charges out to the plate to argue, and he's in full throttle when they crank up Kate Smith's recording of God Bless America during the seventh-inning stretch.

"All of a sudden they said, 'Could you please remove your hats and stand for God Bless America," says Leyland, one of AL manager Terry Francona's coaches here Tuesday night.

So ...

"So I took off my cap and put it over my heart, and then at the last word, I started airing that son of a _____ out again."

The thing about umpires in Yankee Stadium is, they're not even always real.

Mysterious umpires

Anyone who watched the 2001 World Series and saw poor Arizona closer Byung-Hyun Kim blow consecutive saves in Game 4 and 5, even if a Yankees fan, didn't have a heart if they didn't feel at least a little sorry for Kim. Martinez got him for a two-run homer in Game 4, after which Jeter's homer won the game just minutes after the clock struck midnight -- of course -- on Nov. 1, 2001.

Diamondbacks catcher Damian Miller said that night that the roar of Yankee Stadium was the loudest he'd ever heard. Then Kim blew another save while the Yankees roared back the next night.

"As a team, we were more concerned for him as a person," former Arizona and current Florida outfielder Luis Gonzalez says. "Who was that closer who killed, himself, (the Angels') Donnie Moore? You don't like to think that way, but we were worried."

But you know what else stands out to Gonzalez just as much about that World Series? The seventh "umpire" when President George W. Bush threw out the first pitch in Yankee Stadium before Game 3.

"There was an extra umpire when President Bush came out," Gonzalez says. "We were counting, and there was one extra umpire, and we were like, 'Where are they going to put that guy?'"

Was it just one more umpire to help the crew "see things" the Yankees' way?

"Secret Service," Gonzalez says. "He had an ear piece in his ear and stood next to Bush the whole time."

Foreign substances

When Yankee Stadium goes following this season, along with memories of Ruth, Gehrig and Mickey Mantle will go the memories of the famous Pine Tar Game in 1983.

When Brett spoke of those "sad memories", he was referring more to the Kansas City Royals' enduring heartbreaking ALCS defeats over three consecutive years -- 1976, 1977 and 1978.

On July 24, 1983, he felt a different emotion -- rage -- when umpire Tim McClelland, after a complaint from Yankees' manager Billy Martin, took a homer away from Brett because there was too much pine tar on the third baseman's bat.

Weirdest part of it, though, came after the Royals' successful appeal when, on Aug. 18, 1983, they traveled back to Yankee Stadium to replay the game's final four outs.

"There were maybe a few hundred people in the stands," says San Diego manager Bud Black, a pitcher on that Royals team. "We had an off day on the way to Baltimore from Kansas City, and we stopped in New York to finish that game. We flew to New York to play four outs.

"We were there an hour-and-a-half, maybe. We got off the bus and played. It was like a ghost town. It was weird. It was eerie."

Tears

Yankee Stadium has been good for many, many things over the years, and while all those negative Yankees haters may recall the 2003 World Series as the time when Team Royalty received its comeuppance from the lowly-paid serfs from Florida, I'll remember something very different.

After the Marlins won Game 6 to polish off the Yanks, there she was, standing in the tunnel just outside the Yankees' clubhouse, bawling ... the actress, Sarah Jessica Parker.

What, 26 World Series titles aren't enough, Miss Sex in the City Woman?

Jeers

One day soon, Greg Maddux will be inducted into the Hall of Fame. He is not here at this All-Star Game, but he is thankful he had a chance to pitch in the Yankee Stadium spotlight. He worked eight shutout innings in Atlanta's 8-0 win in Game 2 of the 1996 World Series, and that's not all he remembers.

"I got ragged pretty good in the bullpen warming up before the game," Maddux says. "They knew my wife's first name. I thought that was pretty good. We'd been on the road so long I had forgotten it.

"There was this cute little kid who was about 10 years old, too. He kept yelling, 'Mr. Maddux! Mr. Maddux!' When I turned around, he yelled, 'You suck!' and gave me the finger."

My favorite, um, "creative" insult came in the 1990s when Twins manager Ron Gardenhire, then the third-base coach, had his teenage son on a trip to New York with him. Toby Gardenhire was shagging batting practice fly balls in right field next to Marty Cordova when the Bleacher Creatures started singing their version of the Barney song:

I love you
You love me
Marty will give you HIV. ...

Nobody can rag like Yankees fans, and the greatest unanswered question about the new, $2 billion stadium they're about to move into is whether the people who are the most creative at it will still be able to afford the tickets.

As for Tuesday night, with tickets for what might be the final Big Event in Yankee Stadium history -- unless Joe Girardi's club stages a second-half comeback -- ranging up to $700, the assumption is that this will be a kinder, gentler New York crowd.

Then again, the assumption was that an eagle named Challenger never would attack a New York monument like Jeter, either.